Italy: Rome’s Sapienza ranked top university in world for Classics, again

Rome: La Sapienza in Rome has confirmed its position as the top university in the world for Classical Studies and Ancient History in the 2022 edition of the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings.

The result makes La Sapienza the only Italian university to boast an absolute first place at an international level.

The Rome university also came 10th in Archaeology (first in Italy) in the 12th edition of the annual list compiled by the London-based global higher education analysts.

“The excellent result of the QS Ranking by subject rewards the great commitment of our community which is reflected in all areas of knowledge”, said the rector Antonella Polimeni,who noted that six of the university’s faculties were ranked in the top 50 worldwide.

“Furthermore, in 15 disciplines [La Sapienza] is first at national level: almost double compared to the already flattering data of last year”, Polimeni added.

The Politecnico di Milano is also among the top ten universities worldwide for two departments: Design (in fifth place) and Architecture (sixth), while the Università Bocconi in Milan is ranked sixth in Business and Management.

The QS report analyses the performance of 15,200 individual university programmes from more than 1,500 universities across 51 academic disciplines.

Italy is seventh in the world for the number of places in the QS ranking, with 56 Italian universities (four new entries) obtaining 507 placings.

The 2022 list is topped by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by Oxford, Stanford, Cambridge and Harvard.